02/09/00 -- Home Sweet Home

I think I'm done angsting about furries for a little while.   And I can just hear the sighs of relief.

I'm tired of renting a house.  I want to own a house.   I want a place to call my own.  Or at least a place I can call mine and mean my fiance's and mine.  I want a place where I can paint the walls purple if the mood strikes.  Where I can wire things funny and drill holes in walls and hang things on walls (in a permanent sense, like shelving), and not have to worry about whether or not I'm going to get my deposit back when I finally move out.

Okay, so maybe I won't get the $870,000 home I saw in one of the "Where to live" magazines that I picked up.  Maybe I won't have six acres of land around my house to keep the windows of other people's houses from getting too close to mine.  But I want something to call my own.

I want the $X that I'm shelling out a month to go toward making the place I'm living in closer to mine.  I want the tax break that paying a mortgage is going to get me.  Not that I want to pay a mortgage, but it's better than paying rent and having nothing to show for it.

When I was growing up, owning a house wasn't ever a question.   The people who were somebody owned their own houses.  Everyone else rented.  Or they lived in an apartment.  I know that's a naive way of looking at it, and it's certainly not the way I look at it now, at least, not directly.   But I still have this feeling of... inferiority... because I don't own a house yet.   Because I rent a house.

Don't get me wrong, it doesn't bother me.  I'm not staying awake at night thinking about it and scheming about new ways to MAKE MONEY FAST so I can buy my own house. But it is something that nags now and then, something that makes me wonder why my parents could afford to buy a house when they were my age, but I still can't.  Hell, I didn't even have money for a down payment on my car, what makes me think I can really afford to own a house?  Right?

I don't even necessarily need to own my Dream House right away.   I'd be content to live in a place with neighbors for a while.  Until my sweetie and I could manage to afford that $870,000 house with a master suite above the master bedroom and the master bath with its jacuzzi bath tub.

I just want a place that's mine.  A lot to ask, eh?